Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1887-06-17
OLYMPIA. WASHINGTON ter.
OLYMPIA. PRIDAY EVENING, June II, 1887
Courses Come Home to ROOst. "


Courses Come Home to ROOst."
A New York dispatch of the 18th
instant begins with this fearful anath-
ema:
MAY God palsy the hand that wrote
the order; may God palsy the brain that
conceived it, and may God palsy the
tongue that dictated it,"
These words were uttered by Gen.
Fairchild, Commander-in-Chief of the
Grand Army of the Republic, at Har-
lem, before Alexander Hamilton Post,
at reception rendered the Command
er-in-Chief, at which visitors were
present from every Grand Army post
in that part of the State. They were
applied to the President of the United
States, Grover Cleveland. The act
which prompted the utterance was the
Presidents approval of recommends
ton of Gen. Ross, of Texas, that the
Secretary of War be instructed to re-
turn all Confederate flags in charge of
the Department to the States from
whose regiments the flags had been
captured during the war of rebellion.
This sentiment, the report says, was
applauded by the assembled veterans,
and resolutions Of censure, in unmis-
taxable if not quite as positive terms,
were adopted with shout"
While it is not the present intention
to excuse the President for an act
which at best must be acknowledged
as of doubtful propriety, no unpreju-
diced mind can find anything but GEN.
sure for the incorporate language Of
the head of the Grand Army, applied
to one who from his position is en-
titled to the respect of every American
citizen and the unqualified support Of
those who have pledged themselves to
stand by him as Commander-in-Chief
of the military and naval forces of the
whole country, and as executive
charged with protection of the Consti-
tuition and the laws. Gen. Fairchild's
language is dictated by the same
frenzy of mind that nerves the assas-
sims hand, the only difference being
that he irreverently calls upon the Al
mighty to fulfill an edict, based upon
human judgment crazed by excite
ment. Such utterances, in time of
war, would condemn their author to
death, and they seem no less treason
able now, when, within the past quarter
of a century, two draped pages in our
national history detail the deaths OF
chief executives by the assassins' bull
let.
The Grand Army, in its proper
sphere, as an organization of those
who by valiant service ON the battle
fields have won a nations gratitude,
as union of veterans drawn together
by recollectiOns of common hardships,
disaster and peril, receives a sympathy
and respect that amounts almost to
homage; but when it is made vehicle
for carrying party rubbish, or bow
for winging the shafts of malice en-
gendered by personal prejudice, then
the calm mind of Reason carefully
weighs the services rendered with the
objects sought and sorrowfully admits
that its idols are, after all, but of the
Earth earthly"
The subsequent action of the Presi-
dent, in Withdrawing his oral sanction
of proposition which seemed to him
TO have been justified by the kindly feel.
ings that had grown up between the
different sections of the Union, soon AZ
he discovered his mistake, but intensi'
fees the enornity of Gen. Fairchild's in.
vocation for God to palsy the hand, the
brain and the tongue Of one who had
simply misjudged the temper of some
of the people, and as he candidly ad.
mits, his authority in the matter. II
leaves the General very much in the
position of a soldier who has allowed
his gun to 60 off at half-cock; and a
natural revulsion of feeling, if his emo
tons are not feigned, would now i'm
pei him to thank God that his prayer
was not gagged by finite wisdom, and
to supplement it with an equally i'm
passioned appeal for the blessing Of
heaven to rest upon the hand, brain
and tongue that has so narrowly es'
capped humiliation.